


the disappearing lake

by linnhe



Series: monsterfuck anthology [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Anal Sex, Anal Training, Anxiety, Breeding, Depression, Eggs, Human/Monster Romance, Lack of Appetite, M/M, Mind Break, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Oviposition, Rape/Non-con Elements, Stockholm Syndrome, Suicide Attempt, Tentacles, Unreliable Narrator, did someone say monsterfucker Taeyong??, resulting weight loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:22:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27480415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linnhe/pseuds/linnhe
Summary: Taeyong runs away to the middle of nowhere. He runs from expectations, and maybe also from himself.
Relationships: Lee Taeyong/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Series: monsterfuck anthology [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2142429
Comments: 23
Kudos: 163





	the disappearing lake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [naom2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/naom2/gifts).



> Requested through [Kuh's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snooki/) Fandom Fights Back, in support of voter registration.
> 
> Requested by my darling Naomi, who is always cheering me on 😔  
> The prompt was "tentacle johnyong", I hope you'll enjoy where I took this ✨
> 
> Also, I wanna thank everyone who has been asking me to update my wips – your comments are highly motivating! I haven't forgotten about any of them, promise :) I'm a slow writer to begin with, and since my last update, I moved halfway across the world and am currently in a country that's in lockdown. It's been tricky finding a consistent writing rhythm, as I've been alone exactly 0 minutes since moving, and I most enjoy writing when I'm by myself. In any case, I'm figuring things out. Please enjoy this little snack while I scrape my plot points back together lol

Taeyong loves nature walks. There didn't used to be many opportunities for it back when he lived in Seoul. He'd walk by the Han river sometimes, delighted by the glossy fish in summer and the frogs in fall, and there was the occasional company-sponsored hike with his colleagues. But that was about it when it came to moments where he got to feel connected with his surroundings. Buildings, concrete; it just didn't do it for him.  
  
And so, last month, he finally followed up on his promise to himself to quit his office job, which he'd hated from the very first day. He wasn't supposed to hate it, which is why he kept working there for another six years. It was in line with his studies, paid decently, and his co-workers were pleasant enough.  
  
And yet. Taeyong really did loathe it, and in turn, loathed waking up every morning. _A person shouldn't live like this_ , he'd finally thought to himself. Even if it disappointed his parents, even if it would cause his peers or future spouse to look down on him, he had to try. For his own sake.  
  
When a colleague offhandedly told him about a position opening up in their company, located in the countryside, Taeyong listened intently. His colleague was complaining about how they'd never be able to fill it, because who in their right mind would want to move to some Podunk town for half the pay?  
  
Every year before this one, Taeyong would have nodded along in agreement. But he had made a promise to himself, and so he jumped at the opportunity. Because yeah, _he_ wanted to live in some Podunk town. He wanted a chance to find out what it felt like to wake up and not immediately hate the thought of the day ahead of him.  
  
Cost of living was so much cheaper outside of Seoul, he'd essentially still be making the same amount. And honestly, Taeyong would probably have done it for next to free, if it just meant a chance at getting out.  
  
And turns out, he loves his shitty little shoebox apartment in his cookie cutter apartment building, out in the middle of nowhere. It's near the top floor and he can see the rolling mountains stretch out endlessly. There's so much nature nearby he barely knows what to do with himself.  
  
His work day always ends on time out here, the boss not interested in holding them back. Because ‘whatever didn't get finished today can be finished tomorrow,' something that had been said to him exactly zero times during his days in the city.  
  
It means he actually has the time to do something in daylight after work, and he goes to explore a brand new hiking path every time. He keeps his hiking gear in his trunk, as do many of his other co-workers, most of them solidly in their forties and fifties. Although there's some juniors too, as over-eager and hope-filled as he'd once been. That would have made him envious, once. But not anymore.  
  
He hasn't yet asked any of his colleagues to go hiking together. For now, he wants a chance to explore by himself, find out what he really likes. He's never had a chance to do that before. But he will ask, at some point. There's one co-worker in particular he wants to ask, and he doesn't look too closely at his reasons why.  
  
Sometimes there's other people on the trails he picks, but they're few and far between. Which again is unlike the city life he'd become so used to, where even the nature trails are crowded. The little grandmother he runs into today is dressed in a way that speaks of total unselfconsciousness, and Taeyong admires her greatly for it. And then feels embarrassed for his condescending thought, when she stops to chat him up and offers him a fresh orange, ‘flown in straight from Jeju!'  
  
He peels and eats the orange while walking further up the mountain, enjoying the crisp sweetness of the fruit. He's so absorbed by his orange, it takes him a while to realise he's no longer walking on the path, having taken an odd turn somewhere.  
  
He stops and looks around, frowning worriedly. It wasn't unheard of for hikers to die of exposure once they'd gotten turned around, and couldn't find their way back to the trail, even if the trail was right besides them the whole time. But, it's a mild fall day, and the trees don't grow that densely out here. He checks his phone, relieved to see he still has a signal. If he does end up getting lost, he can ping his location to emergency services.  
  
He's just about to place a marker on a low-hanging tree branch, in the form of a piece of orange peel, when he notices a shimmer through some trees up ahead. It's subtle enough that Taeyong suspects he imagined it, but then it comes again, a dancing of light against the underside of the tree leaves.  
  
_Water_ , Taeyong thinks to himself. Which is odd, because there isn't supposed to be any water on this mountain. How turned around had he gotten, exactly? He looks up and notices the sun is quite high up in the sky, which makes no sense, because he left in the afternoon. It should be evening soon.  
  
He's about to check his navigation app to double check his location, when he hears a loud splash. Very loud.  
  
_Curious_ , he thinks to himself. What could make a sound that loud?  
  
He walks into the trees, having to navigate through thick shrubbery to get through them. It's prickly and he feels his ankles getting scratched up, but his curiosity has now fully gotten the better of him, as the splashing sounds continue. He wants to see.  
  
When he breaks through the trees, his question is immediately answered. In front of him lies a huge octopus, beached and defenceless. It's splashing its midnight black arms into the water ¬— which leads out to a huge lake. The lake is even more curious than the animal. Taeyong blinks at the sight, increasingly confused. Such a massive body of water would be marked on maps, would have a name and maybe even be a draw for the town's inhabitants, to spend a lazy summer day by. But Taeyong has poured over the maps of this region, and there simply is no lake on them. Nothing of this magnitude, at least. He can barely make out the shore on the other side.  
  
“Hello there,” the octopus says, and Taeyong's jaw drops. It's only now that he notices the animal in front of him is no animal at all. The tentacles lead up to the torso of a man. A tanned, muscled man (Taeyong also doesn't miss that his face is beautiful, and then feels weird for thinking it).  
  
“Uh, hi?” he replies nervously, and then laughs even more nervously. He discreetly pinches himself, and winces when it hurts.  
  
“I'm Johnny,” the octopus (man? octopus-man?) informs him.  
  
“Taeyong,” Taeyong replies, even though he doesn't really want to tell this creature his name. But something about Johnny is disarming, and he can't think of a lie in time.  
  
“Would you like to come sit with me for a while?”  
  
“Uhm.” Taeyong wants to say no. But he's having a hard time saying the things he wants to say. Actually, he's having an increasingly hard time saying anything at all. His thoughts feels kind of odd; shimmery like the light, hazy and fleeting. “Uh. I don't know...”  
  
“Come here,” Johnny says invitingly, warmly.  
  
Taeyong goes to sit next to him, his movements feeling oddly stiff. He feels nothing like himself at this point, like he's walking through a poor replica of reality and his body isn't fitting him entirely right. It's just a panic attack, he realises. This is a really odd situation, and he's experiencing derealisation. It used to happen to him frequently back in Seoul, but it's the first time it's happened to him out here. He looks out ahead of him, and is surprised to see a massive lake. Why was there such a huge lake out here? He didn't think he'd seen anything like it on the maps of the region...  
  
“There. That's better, I think,” Johnny announces once Taeyong is seated, and Taeyong nods stiffly.  
  
He doesn't speak when the first tentacle touches him, can't think of anything to say. It slides underneath his t-shirt, the suckers cool against his stomach. The sucking sensation feels funny, reminds Taeyong of the time he ate raw octopus and it moved against his tongue, pinching and grabbing. A second tentacle follows, tracing a path up over his back, all the way up to his shoulder blades. It feels funny, but not bad.  
  
“There's a lake,” he says, gesturing out over the water vaguely, and Johnny nods.  
  
“Yes. It's my lake.”  
  
“Yours?” Taeyong asks, feeling a bit amazed. He's never heard of someone owning a lake before. Oh, he feels really weird, he feels... why is he here? Because now that he thinks about it, he doesn't think he's seen a lake on any map of this area. The sun is hot above them, beating down on him, and he wipes his brow.  
  
“Are you too hot?” Johnny asks, and his voice sounds strange, like it's reaching him through a wall of cotton.  
  
Taeyong nods miserably. “Yes, I'm very hot... I don't know what's– I feel kind of funny, I don't know what's wrong with me.”  
  
“Take off your clothes,” Johnny suggests, and Taeyong nods again, getting up to strip. He does it efficiently, because Taeyong is an efficient person, had been raised to be that way by his city.  
  
“Better?” Johnny asks.  
  
Taeyong shakes his head, feeling increasingly overheated. If anything, he's feeling hotter than before, so much of his skin exposed to the blazing sun. Hadn't it been fall? The sun was supposed to be mild in fall, especially in the evening.  
  
“Maybe you should go in the water,” Johnny suggests. “It's cool. You'll like it.”  
  
Taeyong can't believe he didn't think of it himself. The water looks calm, inviting, refreshing; and it's right there. He walks into it enthusiastically, sighing out in contentment when he's enveloped by the cooling liquid.  
  
He floats on his back, slowly floating away from the shoreline, looking up at the bright blue sky and its smattering of clouds, reminiscent of a flock of sheep. Actually, Taeyong has never seen a flock of sheep before, but the clouds remind him of it nonetheless. Oh, he loves being in water. He'd always looked longingly at the Han river, at the little frogs splashing around in it, but knew better than to try and take a dip. Yes, moments like these is why he moved out to the country, for this feeling of utter peace and freedom.  
  
He closes his eyes, sighing in contentment. When something tickles along the length of his back, it doesn't bother him. He just feels so relaxed. Nothing at all could bother him.  
  
“Better?' Johnny asks, floating alongside him, just the top half of his face visible. He must have slid into the water after Taeyong got in, but Taeyong didn't hear him.  
  
“Yes, much better,” he says gratefully. It was so nice of Johnny to let him swim in his lake.  
  
“Good to hear,” Johnny says, and then goes underwater. Taeyong waits for a while, but Johnny doesn't come back within a timeframe that would be normal for a human. He pushes his legs down so he can look down into the water. The lake is clear and yet he can't see Johnny anywhere, because even though the sun is beaming down into the water with great strength, it still goes completely dark some meters below Taeyong's feet. He stares down into the blackness, at the way his feet look pale and white against its backdrop, distorted by the water.  
  
Why was he in a lake...? He'd seen no lake on–  
  
He gets distracted by something underneath his feet, further down, small and circular. It's growing rapidly, and he realises it's Johnny's face, swimming up towards him at dazzling speed. His face looks different from before, concentrated and with bared teeth. No longer very human at all. _How odd_ , Taeyong thinks to himself, and continues kicking his legs calmly. It's mesmerising to watch Johnny shoot up towards him, like a cannonball. It's kind of incredibly, actually.  
  
Just when they're about to collide, Johnny makes a sharp turn outwards, and Taeyong bobs up and down because of the displacement of water the creature's sudden approach caused. He laughs in delight, splashing his hands in the water.  
  
Johnny comes up next to him, giving him a queer look. The inhumanness is gone. Actually, he's even more beautiful now, with his black hair pushed back and his eyelashes glittering with water. Taeyong doesn't feel embarrassed for thinking it, this time.  
  
“You're not afraid?” Johnny asks.  
  
Taeyong smiles at him, bright and happy. “Can you do that again? That was so cool! I've never seen anything swim that fast, wow! I wish I could do that.”  
  
Johnny continues staring at him a little longer, and then grins. This close up, Taeyong can tell his teeth aren't human at all. They're razor sharp and layered, like a bouquet of teeth. It's a bit terrifying, but he can't find it in himself to be genuinely afraid. He wonders if it would be really easy to eat meat, with teeth like those. He always finds himself struggling with getting through the fattiest layer of pork belly. His mom says it's because he doesn't cook it long enough. But it's not like he ever had the time to cook things properly, back in Seoul. That's why he left! Now he could–  
  
“You know how spiders only hunt flailing prey, once they've gotten caught in their webs?”  
  
Taeyong smiles at him, only just now remembering that Johnny was there at all. “I don't like spiders very much. Too many legs.”  
  
“I have a lot of legs,” Johnny points out, and Taeyong's mouth rounds out into a little ‘o'.  
  
“Oh, I'm sorry, I really didn't mean it like that! You're nothing like a creepy spider. I like your legs.”  
  
Johnny blinks at him again. “No one has ever gone this dumb on my venom before. I'm not sure... what to do now?”  
  
Taeyong giggles and floats away. Why was he in a lake, again? He can't remember, but maybe it doesn't matter. He feels cool, and soothed, and he's having a nice time.  
  
When a tentacle wraps around his ankle, it's a welcome sensation. Taeyong sighs happily, enjoying the tickle of the sucking and gripping.  
  
“That tickles,” Taeyong announces dreamily to the sky, and then the tentacle pulls his leg down, down, down, until his face gets pulled below the surface. Just below. He can still breach the surface to breathe if he stretches out his spine, which he does after a couple of seconds.  
  
In response, he gets pulled just a little deeper into the lake, until all that breaks the surface of the water are his wrists and hands. He twirls and twists them, marvelling at the way they're blurred by the undulating water, the coruscating light that dances off its surface.  
  
By the time he realises he's run out of oxygen it's too late, his chest spasming as he starts taking on water. It burns only briefly, and then it just feels cool and relaxing, the water filling his lungs taking away the sensation of pressure, as it evens out to his surroundings. Sadly, he only gets to enjoy the feeling briefly before the edges of his vision start going dark, as dark as the depths below him.  
  
When he comes to again, he's lying on the thin strip of beach that hugs this side of the lake, coughing painfully. Mouthfuls of water get expelled onto the glistening white sand, and Taeyong takes in a raspy breath, shivering at the pain it causes in his chest. It's like knives are being driven into his lungs.  
  
“What... what happened?” he asks, eyes screwed shut. He hasn't actually laid eyes on Johnny since he began coughing up the water, but somehow, unlike before, he can feel his presence the way he can pinpoint the direction of the sun by where his skin feels hottest. Not quite a temperature thing though, more a feeling. He just knows, although he couldn't really say how.  
  
“You drowned,” Johnny says flatly, his voice coming from where Taeyong predicted. “You drowned so calmly I actually began considering you might be some kind of hereto-unseen mermaid hybrid and can breathe water. Never in my life have I met a creature with this little sense of self-preservation. So congratulations on that, I guess.”  
  
Taeyong giggles. “Thank you.”  
  
“It's not a compliment.”  
  
Taeyong doesn't care. He doesn't care about much of anything anymore, besides that the sandy beach feels warm and comforting against his skin, like a soft blanket. It's not overly hot the way it felt before. It feels like the best bed he's ever laid on, except better than that. Like he belongs exactly here.  
  
He's about three seconds removed from drifting into a nap, when his body is jerked around by Johnny's tentacles.  
  
“Hey, buddy. I think you'd better leave.”  
  
“No,” Taeyong replies whinily, grabbing onto one of Johnny's tentacles by the base and wrapping himself around it, trying to will it into becoming a substitute for a body pillow. He always slept better with a body pillow. And he just feels so sleepy, sleepier than he ever has before.  
  
“What the–” Johnny comments incredulously, and Taeyong opens his eyes to a slit, just enough so they can make eye contact.  
  
“You can nap with me, if you'd like?” he offers generously. It's at this point that Johnny's jaw drops, and Taeyong gets to see just how far that jaw can open. Strangely, he feels his whole head might fit in there! What an odd man this Johnny is. Or maybe he's very normal for an octopus-man, Taeyong reasons with himself. It's his first encounter with one, so he couldn't honestly say.  
  
And then he gets to a point of sleepiness where he simply can't fight it off anymore, and drifts off into a dreamless place, head lolling off to the side.  
  
When he wakes, he's by himself on a beach, on a perfectly sunny day. There's water out ahead, and stranger than that, he's completely naked. He sits up and looks over his skin, hissing when he realises he's crab red all over. The sunburn looks so bad, he immediately starts to think about needing medical attention. But, where exactly is he? There's no other people around, and he can't remember having gone to the beach – and where is his towel, and his bathing suit..?  
  
He slowly gets to his feet, hissing at the soreness of his skin. It hurts so much, he's surprised it hasn't begun blistering anywhere yet. When he turns around, he sees a wall of trees, and suddenly it clicks.  
  
He'd been out hiking. Found a lake, when it made no sense for one to be there. And in the lake... in the lake...  
  
He feels Johnny's presence before he spots him, and such fear grips his heart that he shoots into a sprint without looking back once.  
  
“No, stop!” Johnny calls out after him, which only urges Taeyong to run faster. Because where before it eluded him, it's clear as day to him now: Johnny had been _hunting_ him. Taeyong needs to get the fuck away.  
  
He stumbles when he reaches the shrubs below the trees, falling into them with his arms outstretched. Their pricks cut him up bad, which hurts even worse now, when he's sunburned and without the protection his clothes offered.  
  
He curses and tries to get up to his feet, but just falls over again. Almost like he's had too much to drink, but that doesn't make sense. Maybe he's dehydrated, or experiencing heat stroke, or just fainting. The trees sway and dance before his eyes, and his blinks several times, trying to get them to stop moving. Which direction had he been going in, again?  
  
And then he giggles, and sits down on his ass, right onto the shrubbery. It stings, but oh well. It's kind of nice underneath the trees, the way the shadows filter through them. It's rather pretty.  
  
“Oh for the love of–,” Johnny curses, once he reaches Taeyong. Although he's still fast, it's clear he has none of the dazzling speed and grace on land, that he possesses underwater.  
  
“Hi,” Taeyong says happily.  
  
Johnny is pinching his nose bridge. “You know, you are the first person who makes my life more difficult by falling into my trap.”  
  
“Trap?” Taeyong inquires curiously. He looks around him. “I don't see a trap.”  
  
“The plants. I laced their spikes with my venom. Kind of brilliant if you think about it, yes? Except you go dumb as a rock, and I can't eat you when you're like this.”  
  
“Why not?” Taeyong asks, a little shocked. He's perfectly edible still, he's sure of it.  
  
Johnny clicks his tongue. “The same reason I don't fuck if my dick isn't hard. I'm not in the zone. Can you stop acting like you want me to eat you?”  
  
“You have a dick?” Taeyong asks, leaning forward to see if he can spot it. Where would an octopus-man keep his dick? All he can see is the many legs. Or are they arms? But Johnny also has human arms, and he walks around on the octopus arms. So maybe they are legs after all.  
  
Johnny reaches out and slaps Taeyong across the face, hard. Taeyong gasps in shock, and then gives Johnny a very offended look. “That HURT! A lot!”  
  
He sits back with a huff, crossing his arms. Stupid Johnny. How dare he.  
  
“Worth the try,” Johnny shrugs, and then starts gliding away, clearly giving up on bothering with Taeyong. Taeyong immediately gets up, not wanting to be ignored, and follows him down the beach.  
  
“Johnny? I'm hungry.”  
  
“Who cares,” Johnny replies, gliding faster. Taeyong breaks out into a jog, easily keeping up with him. He's still sore all over, his skin still burning and stinging, but somehow it doesn't feel that bad anymore.  
  
“What do you usually eat? Maybe I could have some of that.”  
  
Johnny gives him the most incredulous look so far, and then comes to a halt. They're right by the edge of the water.  
  
“If you don't leave right now, I will drown you for fun.”  
  
“What the heck, that's so mean,” Taeyong complains, “you said this was _your_ lake, which means _I'm_ your guest. The least you could do is offer me some snacks.”  
  
Johnny shakes his head at him in disgust, and then slides into the lake. Taeyong watches him go, powerless to stop it, and also more concerned with the feeling of hunger in his belly. He starts looking around when Johnny has sunk out of sight, delighted to spot a little crab walking away from him. Crabs! He loves crab meat.  
  
He starts chasing it, causing the crab to break into a little sprint. But he's faster in the end, scooping it up and pulling off its pinchers with an expert movement that he didn't even know he possessed. He throws the rest of the animal into his mouth, where it crunches satisfyingly between his teeth, crunch crunch. The crab is still small enough for its carapace to be relatively soft, which is lucky, otherwise he might not have been able to get through it with his teeth.  
  
“Did you just _eat_ Jason?” Johnny's voice comes from the water's edge, incredulous, and Taeyong frowns, while continuing to search the beach for his next victim.  
  
“Who is Jason?”  
  
“The crab, the crab you just ate! He's my friend, Jason!”  
  
“Was your friend,” Taeyong amends helpfully, picking up the next little crab, which he swears he can hear screeching faintly. Do crabs have voices?  
  
“Put Fred down,” Johnny demands angrily, while Taeyong pops him into his mouth. He's immediately rewarded by a pinching sensation – right, he forgot to remove the pinchers on this one. He sticks out his tongue, the little crab dangling off its tip.  
  
“You're a fucking barbarian. Spit him out.”  
  
Taeyong spits, which just causes the crab to sway back and forth, still firmly attached to his tongue. “Heth thuck,” he points out, lisping.  
  
Johnny reaches out and yanks the crab free, tossing him over his shoulder into the water. He looks livid. Taeyong is sucking his tongue, which is bleeding lightly from the crab's pincher getting scraped across it. The taste of blood is kind of making him hungrier, truth be told. One little crab hadn't done anything to satisfy his hunger.  
  
“That's it,” Johnny announces, wading out of the water and using his tentacle-legs to push Taeyong down onto the sand, pinning him in place. “I've had it with you.”  
  
Taeyong laughs, delighted over this brand new game they're playing. No matter how much he struggles, he can't move at all! And Johnny's tentacles feel great against his abused skin, cooling like the lake.  
  
And then Johnny bites him, right on his shoulder. Just hard enough to pierce skin and some of the underlying muscle, and cause blood to begin gushing from over a dozen puncture wounds. Taeyong yelps, because even the numbing effects of the venom can't smooth out this level of pain, and then moans, letting his head fall back onto the sand.  
  
He just feels so good, and fuzzy, and a little pain had always done it for him. He gives Johnny his most appreciative look so far.  
  
Johnny's teeth detach, and he looks down on Taeyong, stunned. “You really do like being eaten. That's... wow.”  
  
“What! I don't like being eaten,” Taeyong huffs. He licks his bottom lip, and blinks coyly. “I just– you know.”  
  
“No, I don't know,” Johnny assures him.  
  
“I like it when it hurts,” Taeyong clarifies.  
  
“What? Why would anyone like that?” Johnny asks, reaching ever-new heights of incredulity.  
  
“Don't know. It just feels good. Kind of zingy and shivery. Like goosebumps, but nicer.” Much nicer. His dick has gotten a little hard, and bucks his hips so he can rub his length alongside one of Johnny's tentacles, trying to increase the good feeling.  
  
Johnny looks down to watch him do it, and slowly, releases one of Taeyong's wrists. Taeyong reaches up, touching the side of Johnny's face as he continues rubbing himself off. His face is just as cool as everything else on him, and he reaches up further, touching his hair. It doesn't quite feel like human hair, coarser and heavier somehow.  
  
Johnny makes a huffing noise, his eyebrows furrowing. “You smell different,” he murmurs, and then Taeyong feels it; something hard sliding against his leg. He looks down and his jaw drops at the sight of Johnny's cock, nearly as long as Taeyong's arm and with a much wider head than he's ever seen on any person. It's piebald black and flesh coloured, in a pattern that is strangely attractive.  
  
“O-oh,” Taeyong comments faintly, stuck somewhere between shock and– horniness. It's true that Taeyong has only ever lusted after men — something he's been careful never to admit to anyone, least of all himself. But that fear that has kept him shackled all his life, that coloured his every move and kept him unhappy, it feels far away and irrelevant now. “It's so pretty,” he comments, reaching out to touch the head. Johnny hisses, while Taeyong takes his fill, touching and caressing the length. It has a spongy texture that has more give than a human's dick, but its circumference still means he can't close his hand around it, and his mouth waters.  
  
“What are you doing...?” Johnny asks, his demeanour so starkly different to how it was just before. He looks confused, a little lost, like he doesn't really understand the current developments. It's a thrilling thing, somehow, and it boosts Taeyong's confidence.  
  
“Is it getting hard for me?” Taeyong asks, coy and hopeful, still moving his fingertips up and down the length. His shoulder is beginning to sting something bad, and he can feel warm rivulets of blood make its way down his chest and shoulder blade, but it seems like a far-off concern. Something that is only tangentially related to his best interest. What's in Taeyong's best interest right now is clearly getting his mouth on that beautiful cock.  
  
“I'm– I feel– _oh_ ,” Johnny stutters, and it's barely a statement, like he's not entirely sure what it is that he's feeling.  
  
“Yeah?” Taeyong murmurs, feeling warm all over in an entirely new way. He dips his head down and licks the tip, gasping in excitement when a gush of gooey liquid drips out of it in response, soaking his face and hand. He licks his lips; it's briny and sweet at the same time. Reminds him of an oyster.  
  
“Do that again,” Johnny says, breathlessly, and a new surge of desire washes over Taeyong. He can't get the tip into his mouth, not without dislodging his jaw, but he gives it his best shot, licking and moaning as his face and chest get absolutely soaked with Johnny's continuous release. It makes everything so sticky, fine gooey threads stretching between his hand and Johnny's length when he pulls it away, sand increasingly sticking to his skin every time he comes into contact with it. The sand chafes, and not in a good way, so he doesn't protest when Johnny starts pulling him into the surf. The usually preternaturally calm water of the lake has been whipped up into a frenzy, waves now steadily crashing into the sand. Taeyong doesn't think it strange, as he thinks very little strange lately, mind kept hazy under Johnny's influence.  
  
The water washes away the sand, and the blood. It stings against his shoulder, just enough to turn him on further. But it doesn't wash away Johnny's slick, which is so thick that it doesn't seem to dissolve easily in water. He lies back onto the soft sand, enjoying the feeling of the water playing through his hair, allowing it to float around his scalp, swishing this way and that every time he moves his head or the force of a wave runs past their bodies. Johnny stays in the shallows with him, allowing Taeyong to lie comfortably, keep his access to air. Taeyong keeps his touches constant, running his hand up and down Johnny's length, playing with the sticky slick. Johnny's gaze is fixed on him, lips slightly parted while he allows the human to do whatever he wants.  
  
When Johnny turns him around onto his hands and knees, a task made easy with the help of his tentacles, a small part in Taeyong wants to struggle, the part that understands why an animal would want him on all fours. But he doesn't struggle, simply submits, his head hanging down in between his arms while he waits for Johnny. His breathing has become erratic and fast, and he stares down at the silvery sand in front of him, tiny shells and other evidence of aquatic life distributed throughout. It's mesmerising. Everything about this place is beautiful, he thinks.  
  
The blunt tip of Johnny's cock rubs over Taeyong's hole, soft at first, like it's just nuzzling him. Taeyong shivers in anticipation, and hollows his back out further, presenting himself.  
  
“Yeah, like that, yeah,” Johnny mutters.  
  
Taeyong knows he's taken on more than he can handle when Johnny begins pushing, and it's already bigger than anything he's ever tried on himself; the occasional stray fingers when he'd masturbate under the covers, eyes screwed firmly shut while he pretended he wasn't thinking about a handsome guy in the office — a guy he could never have, a life he could never have, back in the city, under the scrutiny of his family. Reduced to fucking himself in secret, sometimes overcome with the shame and unfairness of it, his squelching fingers slick with lube.  
  
He doesn't feel any shame now. He gasps and lies his cheek on the sand, trembling as he continues to wait, whining when the pain increases the harder Johnny pushes. He wants this so bad. After a lifetime of aborted desire he just wants to be with someone, anyone. But he can't, he just can't–  
  
When he can't be patient anymore, when his instinct forces him to struggle and try to crawl away from the too-big intrusion, cool tentacles find their way around his waist and limbs, slowly tightening until the choice is taken away from him, keeping him trapped in place. His body can't accept something that size, can't accept anything near it, but now it's clear Johnny is going to make him take it.  
  
Taeyong whines loudly when his ring of muscle is slowly speared apart, further and further, beyond anything he's ever had before, head going fuzzy with the pain. His hole sits snugly around the tip of the cock trying to take his virginity, stretched impossibly taut, and still they're not past the head. Johnny has to take him slowly, is forced to by the sheer resistance the body underneath him puts up. He ruts back and forth, spreading his slick around and pushing it into Taeyong's body, which helps with the slide; but no matter how slippery things become, there's a physical limitation they can't get past. He's quite simply too big for what Taeyong's asshole is used to taking.  
  
He grunts and shoves in with more force, straining as he watches the ridge of his cockhead slowly get swallowed, so slowly that they don't seem to be making progress at all. Taeyong is quietly sobbing now, earnestly trying to crawl away but firmly kept in place. Vague mortification rattles around in the back of his mind, because through all of this, he's still very aroused, used to the association of crying when he's fucking himself. This is what his body deserves, he thinks vaguely, a treatment fitting of its twisted desires.  
  
He lets out a shrieking scream when finally, his body gives in. The pain is sharp and intense as his asshole tears towards his taint, objectively not a big tear but one that feels like he's being ripped apart. Johnny's cockhead slips in all at once, with a jolt that goes through both their bodies and causes Taeyong to grunt, briefly relaxing now that the intrusion is resting inside of him. His breath rattles out of him, and he closes his eyes, letting his head dangle low.  
  
“You did it,” Johnny praises him, and his tone has changed from before. He still sounds a little taken aback, but there's a thick undertone of lust.  
  
Taeyong picks up his screaming again as he's pushed into further, the inches right behind the cockhead slimmer by just enough that Johnny can feed another hand length of his dick into him with little issue. Then the cock is dragged out of him again, and Taeyong sobs heartrendingly, because it hurts even more going out of him, if that's possible.  
  
Johnny watches on in awe as Taeyong's asshole clings to him, being pulled outwards slightly, so determined to cling to him, his slick frothing into a shade of pink as Taeyong's blood mixes in with it. Then he pushes in again, and it's leagues easier this time. He can't tear his eyes away as he moves in and out, picking up a slow pace, his hips rutting back and forth fluidly, spurred on by an instinct he's never called on before.  
  
Taeyong's crying tapers off into soft sobbing after a while, the sharp stabbing pain ebbing into an all-consuming throb, deep, burning hotly. He has no more energy, would fall flat on his face if he was released now. It hurts _so_ bad. And yet, still, he's turned on, his flaccid dick flapping back and forth with each of Johnny's thrusts, steadily leaking precome onto the beach. There are no more thoughts in his mind besides getting fucked; taking Johnny's cock, Johnny taking whatever he wants from him, shoving into his guts and acquainting himself with parts of Taeyong that he'd never even given thought to before. He opens his eyes, and sees Johnny moving inside of him, through the taut skin of his belly.  
  
“I can't,” he whimpers, but that's all he manages. Johnny works hard to stuff as much of his cock into Taeyong as he can, fucking him steadily, and Taeyong becomes convinced he's going to die taking this cock.  
  
Johnny's shoved as deep as he can manage, but still nowhere near bottoming out, when he suddenly stills. He's breathing hard, hand trembling where it's resting on the small of Taeyong's back. There's a pressure that has been building up inside of him, and now it's coming to a head, cresting into pleasure and encouraging him to stay in place. He's fucked before, but oh, he's never done this before.  
  
Taeyong's shivering in his hold, cooled down significantly by so much of Johnny's body pressed up against and inside of him, but also because of the sheer shock of the brutal fucking he's received. He's barely begun piecing a thought back together now that the assault has been paused, when he feels it. A pulsing inside of him, along the length of Johnny's cock, his hole stretching and tearing a little further when Johnny seems to grow impossibly larger against his rim. He screams pitifully, and then cries in relief when Johnny goes back to his regular circumference. But it keeps happening, a rhythmical widening of Johnny's shaft before he contracts again, and Taeyong realises something must be passing through him, right inside of Taeyong. He's torn far enough that it becomes easier to take, but he still jolts and gasps every time Johnny expands.  
  
And then it starts being fed into him, coming out of the tip of Johnny's cockhead, and whatever it is is colder than the lake, causing his teeth to chatter as it nestles into the warm depth of his guts. He looks at his stomach, and sees the faint bump travelling underneath the skin.  
  
And finally, it clicks for him. An egg.  
  
A burst of adrenaline shoots through him and he starts struggling, instinctively horrified over this deep violation of his body. But he might as well have done nothing at all, that's how much give there is in Johnny's hold on him.  
  
“No!” he begs as he strains, now crying for himself, over the fate he's facing. “No, I don't want to, no!”  
  
No heed is paid to his pleas, predictably, but it still hurts something deep inside of him to be disregarded like this. He's become lower than a person, allowing an animal to make use of him like this, and now being bred by it. The venom seems to have worn off completely, because he feels the full force of the humiliation over the situation he's in, made worse by the fact that he's _still_ turned on, his body betraying him in a way he didn't think possible. It's become quiet, the lake having grown still again.  
  
More eggs are pumped into him as Johnny continues doing what his nature tells him to do. One after the other breaches him, slow but steady, and Taeyong can only watch as they're forced deeper into him, travelling along the length of his stomach, following the bends in his guts. He watches on, horrified, as they begin causing a growing bump, forcibly pushed together because there's no more space in his colon. It goes on for close to half an hour, until Johnny has laid his entire clutch, and finally pulls out of him, letting go of him entirely. Taeyong falls face first into the sand, and lies motionless, asides from the occasional shiver wracking his body. He doesn't even feel cold anymore. Just, used, and impossibly full.  
  
He gives up, then. This has happened to him, and there's nothing he can do about it anymore. He'll always be a person who lived through this experience, and was made to carry these. Johnny has bred his guts, and made them his. It's easier when he thinks of it that way — he's no longer responsible for his hole, that's been torn and used beyond what it was made for. It's Johnny's, now.  
  
He curls around his pregnant stomach, cradling the bumpy bulge with both his hands, mapping out the foreign new shape of his body. His skin is already cool to the touch, but the eggs feel even more cold inside of him, radiating it. It reminds him of when he'd wrap an ice pack in a towel to attend to a sprain, and would feel its diffused temperature against his skin, ever-intensifying and eventually becoming unbearable.  
  
One of Johnny's tentacles slithers around his ankle, dragging him further into the water. The water feels almost warm against his skin now, and pleasant once he's floating, relieved from all the pressure except for the pressure caused by the eggs inside of him. But even that seems less in the water. And then Johnny's mouth is on him again, latched around a nipple, sharp teeth sinking into his skin. He starts feeling better almost immediately, and realises it's because Johnny has given him more of his venom, turning pain and fear into distant concepts. He's deeply grateful for the respite, for a chance to let his mind float again. Johnny lets go of him, but stays close, tentacles sliding gently along Taeyong's spindly legs.  
  
Taeyong reaches down into the water and brings his arms around Johnny's chest, dips his face under the surface briefly so he can rest it on his muscled shoulder, pressing a small kiss to its smooth skin. Johnny holds him in return and pulls them deeper, just a little ways, eyes hooded as he observes Taeyong in the eerie quietness of the lake's water, as they float near one another, the sky-facing surfaces of their bodies marbled by the reflections of the water's surface.  
  
“Mine,” Johnny rumbles, somehow crystal clear, and Taeyong wants to answer, but he can't speak under water.  
  
–  
  
Johnny admits he doesn't know how the pregnancy is supposed to progress, but it seems to be progressing well enough. Taeyong feels sick sometimes, and gets fevers sometimes. He's also starving all the time, but whenever he thinks he can't take it anymore, Johnny will jab a sharp finger into Taeyong's stomach and cause one of the eggs to crack, allowing Taeyong to absorb its nutrients. He feels a little guilty about it, but the hunger overrides the guilt.  
  
Johnny is all over him. He's kept warm and cosy on the beach, the initial chill of the eggs finally having worn off, and he's never felt this carefree, kept blissfully doped up by Johnny. His skin blisters and peels, and then finally takes on a tan, protecting him from the never ending sun shining down on them. The sun doesn't seem to set in this place, which is just as well, because sometimes he sees things in the lake that aren't Johnny. Big, fast things. He's always been a little afraid of the dark, and he likes that there's none of that in this place, except for at the bottom of the lake.  
  
Whenever the amount of venom starts running low in his bloodstream, he looks towards the trees, wondering if an escape is still possible. Logically, he knows he's not supposed to be able to survive this kind of gut blockage for very long. But he resides by a magical lake with its magical inhabitant now, so when he doesn't die within the first couple of days, he takes the development at face value.  
  
He usually sleeps in the safe embrace of Johnny's tentacles, lulled to sleep by the rumble in the creature's chest. It almost sounds like a cat purring, but not quite. They hold his stomach, supporting the weight of it, and when he wakes he has to peel them off, bright red marks left behind from the suction cups attaching to him.  
  
He gets bitten every time they wake up together, and he learns to looks forward to it, the sharp sting of Johnny's teeth sinking into his chest, the venom that takes away his worries. He gets fucked often during these moments, the tip of one of the tentacles slipping into him with a casualness that feels comfortable. The tip is easy to take, much more tapered than Johnny's cock, and Johnny doesn't go in very far, nor does he move harshly. Just fucks him quietly, until Taeyong is moaning with it, licking Johnny's skin, feeling the eggs inside of him getting jostled gently.  
  
Johnny disappears sometimes, sometimes for a long time. Taeyong assumes he feeds at those times, because there is one instance where he spots another hiker breaking through the trees at a far edge of the beach. Before he can even begin to think of making a sound, or going over to them, Johnny has lured them into the water. He can't see much besides the head of the hiker bobbing above the surface, and after a brief scream of terror and pain, there's silence again. The water is stirred up enough to murmur as it crashes against the sand where Taeyong is lying, but then the lake's surface becomes like glass again, and the unnatural silence returns. If Taeyong had been in his right mind, all of this would have terrified him to his core. But as it stands, he just rolls onto his other side and resumes his nap.  
  
–  
  
The day comes where Taeyong feels odd. The worst he's felt so far. He gets onto all fours and throws up into the sand, which amounts to little more than bile and spit. A hot flash goes through him, and a short while later, his teeth chatter. Maybe another bout of fever?  
  
But then he feels it, the eggs shifting inside of him. He throws up again, as they shift around and push up against his organs, deep inside of him.  
  
“Uhhnn,” he cries out, resting his forehead against his arm, “uhn, something's happening. Oh, fuck.”  
  
It becomes undeniable that he's going to give birth soon, when one of the eggs starts descending and pushes up against his rim. He reaches back to feel at it, cringing over how dry his hole feels. He begins wondering if he's going to have to go through this ordeal by himself.  
  
“Johnny,” he begs, looking over his shoulder at the water. He needs help bringing this brood into the world, he can't do it by himself, he just can't.  
  
But Johnny doesn't come, and the fist-sized egg doesn't care if Taeyong is all alone. Taeyong knows it was just as big going in, but it went through Johnny then, and Johnny's slick helped things along. There's nothing slicking the way this time. It fully descends into his rectum, and breaches him, causing immense pressure and friction. Taeyong screams, and has no choice but to push, helping it along. He tears in the same place where he tore before, along his taint, and the wound bleeds much more heavily now, the blood running down his thighs in thick rivulets. And then the egg seems to get stuck, unable to go any further, keeping Taeyong painfully stretched.  
  
“Johnny!” he screeches, scared and helpless. There's no response. He reaches back, sobbing when he feels where his rim hugs the egg, clawing at it with nervous fingers. At first, nothing changes. But then he manages to peel away a small part of the egg's shell, and then more of it, until he feels something squishy and wriggly against his fingertips.  
  
The young slides out of its egg, and Taeyong's hole blissfully retracts, trapping some of the shell in place. It's slippery inside the egg, gooey the way Johnny's slick was, and it helps a great deal. Taeyong pushes until the last of the leather-y eggshell is out of him, his elbows dug back into the sand, and he sobs in relief, his whole body trembling with the exertion of his first birth.  
  
“Johnny,” he whines, the name falling from his lips repeatedly, mindlessly now. He keeps begging for the monster to come, as he begins preparing for the second birth. He reaches in between his legs, gathers the egg shell remains and instinctively chews on them while getting ready, gathering energy from them.  
  
The second egg is marginally easier, thanks to the slick of the first young. Taeyong has gotten a better feel for when he has to put the most pressure, and screams and pushes, taking short breaks to catch his breath. It still takes him the better part of five minutes, and he cries when he finally manages and the eggs falls behind him, hitting the sand with a dull thud. He's about to help things along, but before he can reach for it, this young cuts himself free with its sharp little beak, and then crawls up Taeyong's thigh, suctioned to it firmly. It seems to be licking him, and Taeyong realises it must be feeding on his blood.  
  
_Poor baby, all this time, all alone in the dark in that egg... it must be so hungry now_ , Taeyong thinks to himself, delirious with pain. These things are not his children, he acted like their incubator at most. But in his moment of severe suffering, it feels like they are. It's just him and them, and it's up to him to bring them into the world safely.  
  
Each subsequent birth is easier on him. His hole starts to loosen as it keeps getting stretched wide, and the slick and blood builds up. He pushes his hips back and forth, and hums a little lullaby to himself, trying to soothe himself in between eggs. There's so much perspiration on his forehead, on his entire body. It stings when it starts running into his eyes, but he doesn't dare wipe it away, hands too sand-covered.  
  
At last, it seems no more eggs are inside of him. There's at least five babies stuck to his thighs, licking him clean eagerly, and he doesn't dare sit back on his haunches, worried about crushing one of them. And then one crawls up a little further, _back into his hole_.  
  
Taeyong screams in surprise and falls flat onto his stomach. “No!” he protests, reaching back to try and get it out. But it's half inside of him already, so slippery and suctioned to him firmly.  
  
“No, no!” he shrieks, writhing in the sand. It hurts so good, he realises, which only serves to make his humiliation complete. The baby's suction cups are firmly stuck to his prostate, stimulating it rhythmically. The sand's surface is brushing against his cock, and Taeyong sobs as he's rubbed to his peak, which embarrassingly, takes less than a minute. He comes into the sand, face hidden in his hands as he tries to deny that these things are happening to him, that this is the type of person he's become.  
  
“Having fun?” a rumbly voice comes, and the baby is pulled out of Taeyong's guts. All of them are removed, the sound of them popping free like that of bubble wrap. Taeyong rolls around onto his back just in time to see Johnny casually fling the last little black creature into the water, where it instantly disappears underneath the surface. “I see you've given them their first taste of human blood. That's good.”  
  
“Johnny,” Taeyong utters weakly, fresh tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. He feels wrecked, and empty, and strange. He wants to be held by those big tentacles, and soothed.  
  
Instead, Johnny places one of his tentacles across Taeyong's chest, and holds him down while another one slips into him. Taeyong whines and trashes as the thick appendage slides into him unceremoniously, deeper and deeper, the shocked noises he's making falling on deaf ears. Johnny continues digging into him with an impassive expression, pushing Taeyong's body to a new limit like it means nothing to him. Taeyong comes again on Johnny's tentacle, as easy as sliding a warm knife through butter, and sobs hysterically. It hurts, it feels good, it's too much. He can't think anymore.  
  
“Will you shut up?” Johnny finally asks, sounding annoyed, “I'm checking to make sure nothing got left behind. Now that they're out, their magic won't help keep you alive.”  
  
“It hurts,” Taeyong pleads, touching his stomach where he feels Johnny writhing inside of him, thick and unforgiving.  
  
“Thought you liked that,” Johnny points out.  
  
And that shuts Taeyong up, because it's undeniable that he does. Even now, part of him revels in Johnny just taking what he wants. But still, he wishes it didn't have to be like this, relentless like this.  
  
“You're good,” Johnny says after a while, and pulls his tentacle free with a slurping, sucking sound. “Although I don't know if your hole can be set to rights again, after all this.”  
  
Taeyong bites his bottom lip, thinking about the damage that's been done to it. Johnny's right, it probably won't ever go back to normal again.  
  
“And now I think it's time you left,” Johnny says, and he's nothing like the Johnny Taeyong had grown used to during the pregnancy. His face is sharp with tension, the look in his eyes haughty. Like Taeyong is nothing more than a gross little slug, one he wants off his beach.  
  
“L-leave?” Taeyong stutters, eyes growing wide. He's naked, exhausted, bloodied. He doesn't think he can crawl to reach the edge of the water, much less walk anywhere.  
  
“Take a nap if you need one. But after that, yes. It's time for you to leave.”  
  
“I'm not– I can't– no!” Taeyong says, now fully panicking. There's nothing clouding his mind anymore, but the thought of leaving Johnny seems daunting beyond words. Leave, and go where? Back to his stale office job? Now that he knows that a creature like Johnny exists in the world, now that he knows that magic is real, now that they've shared such an intimate experience? Taeyong literally gave him children. He can't leave, he could never–  
  
“Leave, or I will make you leave,” Johnny warns him. And then he goes back to the water, and Taeyong cries out for him and tries to crawl after him, but Johnny is too fast for him, his movements unencumbered. He disappears into the water, and when Taeyong finally reaches the edge, there's no more trace of him.  
  
He cries for Johnny by the water's edge, lying on his back in the shallows. He cries until he's worn himself out, and falls asleep out of pure exhaustion. The water laps at his temples and cheeks, and carries away the evidence of his tears.  
  
–  
  
Taeyong wakes up with a jolt, sitting up.  
  
“Johnny?” he croaks.  
  
Something is very wrong. It takes him a couple of moments to put it together, but then he does. He's in a forest. He's dressed in his own clothes. There's sounds all around him, of little woodland creatures, of birds up high. He can hear a lone cicada. The sun is setting.  
  
No more lake. He's all by himself. Back in his own world.  
  
It takes him a long time to get to his feet. He feels more tired than he ever has in his life.  
  
He walks the path back to his car. It's easy to follow now, so obvious. He recognises the scenery, even runs into the same little grandmother from before. She asks him if he had a nice walk, and he nods robotically, unable to speak a word to her.  
  
The drive home is difficult. It's like his body refuses to remember how to operate a vehicle, and he nearly causes a crash while pulling into his apartment block's parking garage, when he accidentally hits the gas instead of the break.  
  
He punches in his building's code and shuffles over to the elevator, feeling like a dead man walking. When he finally, finally gets past his front door, he just lies down in the middle of his living room floor, and stays there, and after a long time, falls asleep there.  
  
–  
  
The next few days are brutal. No time seems to have passed in this world, but Taeyong feels like he's aged a decade. He didn't dream it, his damaged hiking gear and his body is evidence of that, hole sore and prone to bleeding every time he takes a shit, and indeed permanently looser. He studies it in a hand mirror in his bedroom, gently touching the puffy rim. He wonders how his children are doing.  
  
He can't get used to the little rituals of his human life anymore, despairing every time he has to get through a banal task. Brushing his teeth seems like the single stupidest thing, and he feels quietly murderous towards his colleagues at work, who laugh and chat and take no issue with the smallness of their lives. Preparing food seems equally stupid. The hunger gnaws, but he can only rarely bring himself to eat. It sits in his mouth, as appetising as sand, hard to swallow.  
  
He decides it's okay if he feels sorry for himself, and gives himself over to it, wallowing in self-pity. It's just all so unfair. He doesn't want to eat. He doesn't want to live this life. He wants the lake! He wants to be with–  
  
He shakes his head, realising he's been mindlessly staring at his pc screen for the last half hour. His colleagues don't notice how strange he's been behaving lately, or pretend not to notice. He hates them for it, just wants someone to yell at him, so he can do the same. So he can feel something. Anything.  
  
Maybe he should go back home, to his mom and dad. But as soon as he thinks it, the thought of them fills him with revulsion. They don't love him, don't care for what he needs or wants. His dad had been so disappointed over Taeyong's ‘demotion' that he could barely speak.  
  
He buys a toy. It's big, as big as Johnny was, but not piebald like him. It's a muted blue. His asshole heals and he learns to take it well, and rides it, and comes sometimes. It's good right until he finishes, and then he feels empty, ashamed, and lonelier than ever.  
  
He goes back to the forest, but it's just a forest. No matter how long he trudges through it, circling the paths, he can't find the lake again.  
  
Because it isn't there. In a moment of complete desperation, he wonders if it was ever there to begin with. Maybe he's been hurting himself, and his mind made up the whole thing to help explain his erratic behaviour. Maybe he didn't choose to come to the boonies, but was sent here by his company, too crazy to hack it in the city. Because what career man would make the choice he made? It makes no sense.  
  
Whenever he's close to fully convincing himself that it never happened, he stares in the mirror. Because — he doesn't know how he managed to bite himself on the shoulders and on his chest, over and over, the scars having turned silver-y on his skin. He studies them in his bathroom, tracing them with his fingertips. _Maybe they're not bite wounds at all...?_ he thinks, wondering if he's been self-harming, and just can't remember.  
  
They're definitely not human bites. He has no good explanation for them, but it makes sense that he wouldn't have one in his delusion. And there's stretch marks on his stomach, little red lines that are also beginning to fade to silver. He doesn't have an explanation for those, either.  
  
He spends every day missing something that isn't real, until he feels deranged with the intensity of it. And the worst part is that he can't tell a soul. Because then they'd know he's crazy for real.  
  
He can't even write it down, can't figure out where to begin.  
  
_I woke up at the edge of an enchanted lake, and was assaulted by a monster_ , he thinks to himself. _And I had his children, and then he sent me away. He's vicious but pure. There's no pretences in his world. I lived day to day, hour to hour. I don't know which thing I fell in love with first, him or his life. Maybe I just loved to be high all the time._  
  
Four months pass before he reaches the inevitable conclusion that he should just kill himself. He briefly considers jumping off his building, but– the thought of all that concrete rushing up to meet him, colliding with him one last time. It's not how he wants to spend his final moment in this world. He came out here to be in nature, so, maybe that's also where he should take his own life. And if he manages to find a spot secluded enough, maybe no one would ever find him there... and he could just slowly decompose amongst the trees, and be swallowed back up by the earth. In his current state of mind, it sounds heavenly.  
  
When he's finalised his plan, and bought the rope, peace settles over him. He has a way out, and it makes his final day at work bearable. A junior colleague tells him a little joke, and he doesn't get it, but he can read her body language well enough to know he's supposed to laugh. He laughs, and she flushes attractively. He briefly wonders if he hadn't been so twisted, if this would have been the woman he built a life with. A real life. With real children.  
  
But he feels nothing when he looks at her.  
  
The drive after work is nice. He has to take it slow, still awkward behind the wheel, and his malnourished body exhausted to the point where driving is tiring. The hike is also tiring, but he only has minimal gear with him. A backpack with a rope, that's it.  
  
He finds the perfect tree, high up the hill, and starts undressing. He's looked up how to tie the noose on Youtube. The video description had held the number of an American suicide prevention hotline. He doesn't know why that's funny to him in this moment, but he giggles as he loops the noose, and slides the rope over his head. He climbs the tree determinedly, knowing this will be the last thing he ever does, and wanting to do it right. When he feels he's up high enough, he stands on a branch and ties the rope to a higher one. He's going to climb just a little higher, so the drop will be steeper and he'll have a chance of breaking his neck.  
  
His tired body betrays him however, and he slips and loses grip before he can make it to the next branch. He can't breathe, but his neck hasn't snapped. He hangs just above the forest floor, so close to it that the grass brushes gently against his naked toes.  
  
_Fucking ridiculous_ , Taeyong thinks. Until the very end, his life proved to be stupid. And then he starts choking, his body running out of air. _At least it will all be over soon,_ he thinks desperately, closing his eyes. He listens for the sound of birds, and cicadas, but of course, there aren't any. There's a chill in the air, winter isn't that far off. They've all gone into hiding, for the long dark cold. It's time for Taeyong to go into hiding too, on the other side, where no more pain will reach him. He struggles silently, his body kicking, fighting its fate violently, despite his wish to die.  
  
He's lifted up, and his body instinctively takes a rasping gulp of air. Johnny is holding him, his expression unimpressed.  
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
Taeyong can't speak, because his throat had been pinched shut just moments before. He can't even cry, so choked up with happiness. He reaches out and touches Johnny's precious face, looks into his light brown eyes, his own eyes wide and bloodshot from the pressure of nearly choking to death.  
  
Johnny pushes his head through the noose, freeing him from it, and holds him up with two of his tentacles.  
  
“Honestly,” he says, exasperatedly, looking Taeyong up and down. “I know I did some damage, but I didn't send you off looking like this.”  
  
“H-hate you!” Taeyong manages to push out, and then throws his arms around Johnny's neck, holding on to him with an embarrassing level of desperation. “Woke up– gone– don't do that again!”  
  
“Alright, okay, enough. Feisty little bag of bones,” Johnny says disapprovingly, and he moves sideways, and just like that, they're by the lake again. That easy, like slipping through realities.  
  
He sets Taeyong down on his feet, and Taeyong kneels and rubs his hands through the sand. “It's real,” he murmurs to himself, shaking with emotion. All of it, all of it had been real. He'd been lovelorn, because the person he loves exists.  
  
Johnny starts slithering off, and Taeyong jumps and grabs for him, heart hammering wildly in his chest. “What?” Johnny asks, already trying to peel Taeyong off.  
  
“No,” Taeyong tells him, clamping down with more force. He knows Johnny could still remove him if he really wanted to, but the giant pauses.  
  
“I brought you back here. That's what you wanted, isn't it?”  
  
“Yes, but. Also want you,” Taeyong announces.  
  
Johnny laughs. “Why. I haven't bitten you.”  
  
“...”  
  
Johnny does peel him off then, and sets him down. “You know this place isn't good for you. It's like death for your kind, even if this place never lets you die. You're not built for this. You'll lose your mind.”  
  
“I don't care,” Taeyong says petulantly. “Over there, I was losing my mind too. So what does it matter.”  
  
“Such a baby,” Johnny says, intently observing Taeyong's face. It's true that Johnny has that quality to him, like he's as ancient as water itself. But Taeyong can't forget that he didn't know how to make love, until he met Taeyong. Couldn't procreate. He's not wise, just old. There are still things neither of them know, but can learn together.  
  
“I want to stay.”  
  
“You can't,” Johnny tells him. “This place is not for you.”  
  
“Then why. Why not just let me die. You like me too, just admit it already. You want me here.”  
  
“I don't,” Johnny assures him, and the haughtiness is back. He seems ruffled, like no one has ever spoken to him like this before. Taeyong wonders if anyone has ever spoken to him at all, besides pleading for their life. And Taeyong should probably not want to be with a monster who eats his kind, but God help him, he does want it.  
  
“It's different between us. You know that. I respond differently to you. I'm rare to you, as rare as you are to me.”  
  
Johnny shakes his head at him, and looks towards the water of the lake.  
  
Taeyong sinks down onto his elbows and knees, and presents himself, the way he knows Johnny likes it. “Please,” he asks loudly, laying his cheek onto the sand.  
  
“What's _wrong_ with you?” Johnny asks, his tone taking on an edge of aggression. “Do you know how lucky you are that I haven't killed you yet? Coming here should have killed you. The pregnancy should have killed you. All that venom should have fried your brain. I think it has, actually.”  
  
“No,” Taeyong cries out, hollowing out his back further. “Even if you never bite me again, I won't leave. I want it, I want–”  
  
When Johnny's tentacles finally touch him again, he feels the touch buzz throughout him, like a teenager in love, holding hands for the first time. He hums his pleasure, going pliant, letting them touch wherever they want. They're heavy, and cooling, and feel so so good. Like Johnny, like home.  
  
Gooey slick is spread all over his body by them, and there's only one place that slick could be coming from; the tip of Johnny's cock. Johnny is wet for him, Johnny is also aroused. It makes something inside of him cheer, and puts him at ease at the same time. He didn't imagine the affection the monster holds for him, after all.  
  
One of Johnny's tentacles slip into him, and it's too much too soon, but Taeyong finds he loves that. Another tightly wraps his waist, and keeps him in place, while Johnny goes as deep as he wants. Taeyong cries out and trashes, as his entire colon is filled, its kinks filled out, until the very tip of Johnny's tentacle kisses his small intestine. He doesn't think even the eggs went that deep, and he feels delirious with the pleasure of being opened up so thoroughly. His cock is hard, precome dripping from it continuously as his prostate is stimulated by the rough nubs on Johnny's tentacle.  
  
Then a second tentacle slides into him, and he really can't take that much girth, not even after having trained himself on the toy. The pain of being torn again is sharp and exquisite, and he can't wrap his mind around how good it is to be reshaped like this, to have his body taught to take Johnny, no matter how big, no matter much resistance is put up.  
  
“Hnn, yess,” he keens, and isn't even embarrassed when the drool that had been pooling in his mouth slips out, falling in strings from his lips.  
  
“You really do want it,” Johnny observes, and Taeyong nods as vigorously as he can.  
  
“Want it,” he says, repeating dumbly.  
  
Johnny starts fucking him with his tentacles, slow and even, and it feels like his whole guts are desperate to keep him inside, clinging and clenching along the length of them. The push and drag of them is deep, a whole-body sensation. He comes, come spurting from his small cock, but he doesn't care — all he cares about is pleasing Johnny.  
  
Johnny pulls out all the way at some point, and keeps Taeyong's hole spread apart, looking into it.  
  
“Do you want more children?”  
  
“ _Yes_ ,” Taeyong keens, bucking his hips.  
  
“Like being bred?”  
  
“Uh-huh. Like it, like giving you babies.”  
  
“Okay... okay,” Johnny says softly, like he's conceding. “I'll give them to you. Later.”  
  
The tentacles come back, one, two, three. The third can't get in at all, just its tapered end wriggling inside, but Taeyong feels proud of himself. He reaches back and keeps himself spread apart, cheek resting on the sand, wet with his spit.  
  
Johnny fucks him for a long time, until he has Taeyong reduced to an over-sensitive mess, until he's crying, because there's nothing else left he can do. But still, he takes it.  
  
“What do you feel for me?” Johnny asks. He wants to sound unaffected, Taeyong can tell. But he isn't. It's so obvious now.  
  
“Adore you,” Taeyong garbles. The tentacles pull out of him, one after the other, and he hates it, doesn't want to be without the fullness they bring. He's dropped in the sand then, and he curls into a tight little ball, shivering with overstimulation. For a moment, he fears he's going to get left behind again, but then he's lifted up. Johnny carries him in his human arms, and they go into the lake together, where he's held by the surface, so he can breathe. The water used to feel cold to him, but not anymore. This is where he belongs.  
  
“Never go in the lake by yourself,” Johnny says into his ear, “I'm not the only thing that lives here.”  
  
“Okay,” Taeyong says, hugging Johnny's broad neck. He's known for a while that other monsters lurk, but in this moment, he doesn't care. He's safe with Johnny.  
  
“I'll bring you fish every day. There's many, fat and nutritious. You have to eat a lot of them. Grow strong for our next clutch.”  
  
“You never brought me any before,” Taeyong points out, a little offended. He feels like he hasn't had a decent meal in a year, and half of that is Johnny's fault.  
  
“Because I wanted you to leave. Hunger is a powerful motivator. But I guess there's even less food in your world.”  
  
“How are they? The babies?” He looks down into the water, even though he knows it's pointless. They're all black, how could he spot them in the impenetrable darkness.  
  
“All dead.” Johnny says emotionlessly. “They got eaten. By fish, and the like.”  
  
Taeyong's jaw drops. It's not that he ever loved their offspring, but he did care for their wellbeing. “You let ALL of them get eaten?”  
  
Johnny splutters. “What was I supposed to do? This is how nature works.”  
  
"What! You gave me so much shit when I ate that crab."  
  
"Uh, clearly that's different? Crabs are elegant and wise creatures, and not for eating. Seriously. Don't piss off the crab kingdom."  
  
Taeyong rolls his eyes, although he's secretly endeared, and curious about meeting the king of crabs. “Whatever. Listen, for our next pregnancy, we have to build a nursery. I'll have to walk the perimeter of the lake, to find the best spot. There must be an inlet we can use. And–”  
  
He gets silenced by a kiss. A very good kiss.  
  
–  
  
Taeyong's floating in the little bay they walled off, with the help of a dam, built from kicked up sand and tree branches. He's naked as the day he was born. His stomach is huge, and he's humming a melody to it. He's nothing like the emaciated wretch that found its way back here, now plump with all the salmon that Johnny's been feeding him, in preparation of this second clutch that's been laid inside of him.  
  
His cheeks and thighs are the fullest they've ever been. His hair has grown long, its black strands floating out around his head, like a halo. The sun that never sets heats his skin, as does the love he feels.  
  
Johnny's floating next to him, and his hand finds his, holding on. Taeyong grins at the sky.

**Author's Note:**

> This is undeniably an homage to my favourite oviposition fic, [Eggspedition by Rekki](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17245199), which I've read approximately one hundred times :')


End file.
